Night, who thrived on tension, chose a date: The three key Disney executives would get the script on Sunday, February 13. Paula, Night's assistant, would fly from Philadelphia to Los Angeles that morning with copies of the script and hand-deliver them to the homes of Dick Cook, the chairman of the Walt Disney Motion Picture Group; Oren Aviv, the head of marketing (Disney did not make movies that it didn't know how to sell); and most significantly, Nina Jacobson, the Disney president. Nina's tastes largely dictated what kinds of movies Disney made. Later that evening, on an itinerary established weeks earlier, Paula would collect Cook's script, then Aviv's the next morning. Night wanted to know where they were at all times. Nobody kept Night's scripts for very long.
Except for Nina. Because she had worked with Night from what Disney saw as the start — The Sixth Sense — Night granted her one special dispensation. She could keep the script. Night trusted her.
...
There was another advantage to having Paula hand-deliver the new script on a Sunday. It promised his script immediate and undivided attention on a day of the week when phones rang less, when time slowed down, when people were closer to their emotions. He was comfortable getting in the middle of people's weekends. He felt that the reading of his script should not be considered work. It should add to the weekend's pleasure.
Nina read the sixth draft of Lady in the Water that night, after her kids had gone to sleep and the house was quiet. On four previous occasions she had sat down to read original M. Night Shyamalan scripts, and all four times the scripts had been well-crafted, unique, and interesting. The scripts didn't have any big plot holes. He always worked them over hard before sending them out. They typically contained little direction, or notes for the director — for himself — about how the scenes should be shot. There wasn't much exposition. The story was told through the dialogue, in what was said, and often in what was not said. Reading Night's scripts was like reading a play. She knew Lady in the Water, whatever it was, wouldn't be a mess.
There was an early, funny scene in Spanish, the fastest-growing language in America. Nina was fine with that. The protagonist, Cleveland Heep, had a stutter. She made a note of it — two hours of stuttering could make an audience insane. The beautiful wet pool creature, the role slated for Bryce Dallas Howard, showed up on page 15. Bryce was not a star, nobody would come to a movie because she was playing the female lead, but she was pretty, talented, inexpensive, and Night had loved working with her on The Village. There was a character named Reggie who worked out only the top half of his body, and Nina found him amusing.
And then she started to have problems. She wasn't yet on page 20 of a 136-page script.
There was a scary-looking creature, sort of a mutation between a dog and a hyena, with sharp wet teeth and spiky grass for fur.
And Night wants this to be a Disney-branded movie? Too scary.
There was a fivesome of smokers, and even though they smoked only cigarettes, it was clear they'd logged a lot of hours, if not years, with their mouths on bongs.
Not Disney.
The film critic in the movie, Mr. Farber, was attacked.
Not smart.
Then there was the role Night wanted to play himself, Vick Ran, a stymied writer with a cloudy future, living with his sister and carrying the movie's message. It was an enormous supporting role, the second-biggest male role in the movie, and Night had never had a role nearly this big.
Should the audience see that much of Night?
Then there was the enormous Korean party girl, Lin Lao Choi, who explained the mythic tale that was the backbone of the entire script. She did her explaining not through action, the holy grail of modern moviemaking, but with words.
Way too much exposition.
With Lin Lao and her invented language came Nina's biggest problem with the script. She didn't understand the myth.
Nina read it once and then read it again. She picked up a phone and called her boss.
''I don't get it,'' she said.
''Neither do I,'' Dick Cook said.
The next day — Valentine's Day — one of Shyamalan's agents, Jeremy Zimmer of United Talent Agency, drove to the writer-director's farmhouse outside of Philadelphia to give him Disney's uncertain reaction. The following evening, the three Disney executives flew East to have dinner with Shyamalan and Zimmer at the Rittenhouse Hotel's restaurant Lacroix.
...
From the start, the dinner was a disaster. The tables were too close together; Night felt that other diners could hear their conversation. The service was slow. There were many courses with tiny portions. Night was not touching his food. The waiters hovered excessively.
Nina and Night did most of the talking. They were sitting next to each other, with Zimmer on Night's left. Usually, Night found Nina's screechy voice amusing, but this night it was only grating. She sounded like the adults in the Charlie Brown TV movies: wha-wha-wha-wha-wha. Her problems with the script came spewing out of her without a filter. The boundary between candor and anger, Night couldn't identify it.
You said it was funny; I didn't laugh... You're going to let a critic get attacked? They'll kill you for that... Your part's too big; you'll get killed again... You've got a writer who wants to change the world but doesn't, but somebody reads the writer and does? Don't get it... What's with the names? Scrunt? Narf? Tartutic? Not working... What's with all these rules? Don't get it... Lin Lao Choi — and good luck finding a six-foot Korean girl — is going to explain all these rules and all these words? Not buying it. Not getting it. Not working.
She went on and on.... Night was waiting for her to say she didn't like the font Paula had printed it in.
The attack left Night feeling euphoric. He felt like a boxer, adrenaline coursing through him after getting hit. He came out flailing. He started with a broad attack, then planned to go into a line-by-line defense and conclude with soaring praise for his own work. He didn't want to have to do it, but who else would? He went right into Johnnie Cochran mode, which suited him. He did an excellent and funny, ''if the glove don't fit, you must acquit'' bit.
He was just about to shift gears when he looked at them carefully, one by one. He saw nothing. They weren't engaging him the way an opponent is supposed to. There was no boxing match going on. They were looking at him like he was on another team.
And as Night looked at them, he realized this wasn't a dinner meeting. It was an intervention, as if they were meeting with an alcoholic who needed to get into a treatment program. Their purpose was to talk some sense into him. Get on the team, buddy — we can all make lots of money!
Night felt sorry for them. They felt emboldened by The Village, by their belief that had Night only listened to them, that movie could have earned double or triple or quadruple the money it made.
''What are you saying, Nina? What are you saying the script needs? Three weeks? Three months?''
Nina said nothing. Her face said, Not three weeks, not three months, not ever.
''You're saying I've lost my mind.''
''No, we're not.''
''Yes, yes, you are.''
Night went into a long monologue of everything he had written as an adult, as a writer-for-hire, as a ghostwriter, as the writer of four original screenplays for Disney. He cited dollar figures, how the movies had ranked for their studios. When he got to the four Disney movies he had made, it was pow! whack! zoom! bop! The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village.
''Two of the four I made for Disney are among the largest-grossing movies of all time. But now — now I've written Lady in the Water, and I've lost my mind. Suddenly, I can't write anymore. I've lost my touch, gone crazy.''
Nina said, ''You know we had our problems with The Village.''
That was true. But Night had always thought they let him do his thing, as a writer and a director, because he had earned the right to do so. Now he was hearing something different. He was hearing: We didn't put our foot down last time, and we regret it; we're not going to make that mistake again.
He had known these people for years. He had always liked them; he had always thought they were smart. He knew they were good people. But a different kind of group thinking had taken hold of them. All of a sudden they looked like strangers.
It seemed to Night that they didn't know how they wanted the meeting to end. He couldn't understand why they didn't come in and say, ''Help us understand this movie.'' Had that been the first thing said at dinner, the whole night would have played differently.
He dug deep and said something he didn't know he still had in him: ''I'm going to have to decide whether I make this movie at all, or whether I make it elsewhere.''
Nobody responded.
Finally, Zimmer said to the Disney trio, ''We're thankful for the truthful response you've given us.''
Night didn't look at Zimmer. ''I don't agree with that. I didn't think it was a truthful response.'' He felt Nina had been preconditioned not to like the script, that she hadn't given it a truthful reading. He had put his heart into that script, he had put his soul and his dreams and his faith into it. It had more of a big idea — more of him — than anything he had ever written. It deserved more than we don't get it.
''There's a certain amount of space you have to give an artist, and the problem here is that you haven't given me that space. I don't have any room to move. You like the side of me that does conventional things that make money, and you don't like the side that does unconventional things.''
Everything was out now, including Night's unhappiness. The dinner came to a quiet close. Night tossed his spotless napkin on the table. The check came and Zimmer paid. The fivesome headed to the elevator.
''You three go down,'' Cook said. ''I want to talk to Night for a minute.''
Soon they were alone outside the elevator.
Cook told Night he could still make the movie at Disney, even if the executives didn't understand it. He said, ''Prove us wrong, Night. Just make the movie for us. We'll give you $60 million and say, 'Do what you want with it.' We won't touch it. We'll see you at the premiere.''
''I can't do that,'' Night answered. Spend a year of his life trying to prove them wrong? No. What a waste of energy. Their lack of faith in Lady in the Water would infect the whole project.
''C'mon.''
''I want to thank you for six great years and four great movies,'' Night said.
An elevator came, and they rode down together in silence. There were no hugs and there were no Hollywood loveyas. The three Disney people walked together past the doorman and out of the hotel and into a waiting car. As they left, Night was crying. He was crying because he liked them as people and he knew he would not see them again, not as his partners. He was crying because he was scared, because there was a big part of him that did want to simply get along with everybody, to do something safe, to be successful. He was crying because he knew they could be right. He was crying because in rejecting that script, they were rejecting him.
